A California Republican

The President had a press conference last night. He stated that he is committed to bringing the United States out of a recession, and that his budget it tied to recovery.

I am not sure he has noticed, but the bailout package that was suppsoed to prevent more bank problems, spur lending, and start a reversal of the recession-trend has done nothing of the kind. Instead, the lending is not up. Most people cannot get loans. Housing prices are dirt-cheap right now and people cannot buy - because they cannot get loans. The TARP program didn’t help the people it was supposed to be helping. And an even greater problem is that there was no oversight of the TARP funds, and so banks don’t even want to say where they spent the money - if they can even tell.

So now the President wants to spend more money. He wants to deficit spend. If the President was going to spend money that the country had, and not spend us into debt in order to do what he wants to do, I might agree with it. I might not, but there is a higher chance that fiscal conservatives agree with spending when the spending doesn’t rely on deficit-spending tactics. I agree that sometimes the best way to pull out of a recession is to encourage spending. But that means to encourage spending by people - not by the government. The government cannot indefinately spend to support the economy. If that happens, the money will eventually dry up and then the consumers still won’t be spending.

The President stated that we have to “save and invest, not spend and debt.” Well Mr. President, that’s not what your budget and your plans are saying.

He did make some good points in his conference. There are some things that they are doing to help out people who are losing their homes and jobs - the extension of unemployment for additional weeks is a good start. But all the other reforms take money. There are ways to make the current programs run better, and free up more money. Why not start there before you try to overhaul the entire program? Unless you are overhauling the program so that it does more for less, what is the point in spending more on a program that isn’t working?

The President says medicare isn’t working. It isn’t efficient, and it isn’t providing what the patients need. Ok Mr. President, I agree. Medicare is a huge fiscal sinkhole. But how are you gonig to fix it? Spending more money on the same program doesn’t work. Medicare has proven it doesn’t work. So what are you going to do to fix it? The President answered that he will fix it by evaluating it, and that his advisors are already in that process. There have been any number of “evaluations” done on Medicare already. Take those, and come up with a plan.

I think that President Obama is getting stuck with a sinkhole. There is no way to come out of this recession looking good. He is spending waaaay too much, and trying to reform programs and spend on other things at the same time. I think he needs to sit down and evaluate priorities. He needs to focus, and get things done in one area of government at a time.

Good luck Mr. President. I wouldn’t want the job for all the gold in the land.